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5 Tips for Startups to Kick Start Social Media Marketing on Budget

Social media is one of the most important marketing channels that you should use to take your startup to the next level, especially when your new business is on a tighter marketing budget. It offers countless opportunities to promote your business and boost brand recognition, even spending without a single penny, however, the paid promotions can always be tried to multiply the results.

Social media marketing should be a top priority for startups for many obvious reasons, but mainly because website search engine ranking can take some time, and you should not wait for the search engine traffic; rather you should start getting people to your website using social media, for faster brand recognition and building initial customer base. Moreover, even as a website gains authority, brands should continue engaging customers on social channels.

Well, this article highlights some of the tips you can follow to kick start your social media marketing efforts on social media, without spending any significant amount of money.

1- Use Your Personal Profile

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While social media has millions of users, getting followers for your new Facebook page or Twitter account can be tough. Use your personal profile to share content from your business account. This will help in attracting your friends and followers to like your page.

You can also request your friends to share your page with their followers, and believe me, you should not hesitate in doing so. Make sure to have attractive business page, and explicitly ask your family and friends and even friends of friends to follow your page and share it with their connections.

2- Hold a Contest

A contest can boost your visibility and draw more customers to your business. However, you have to come up with an attractive reward that will entice your followers to join the contest. A reward could be monetary, free products, free subscription or a trip among many others. The two main contest ideas that companies use include asking followers to share your posts or having the followers take images and share them with the brand name and specific keywords.

Related Readings:

10 Reasons for Startups & Small Businesses to Consider Contest Marketing

5 Things a Startup Must Consider Before Launching a Social Media Contest

3- Create Some Videos

In addition to text and images, make some videos and share them with your followers. Videos can help in brand exposure because they generate more engagement compared to other forms of content.  Have some live videos as well using social media features such as Facebook and Instagram live.

Moreover, you can always ask your initial customers to shoot and post testimonial videos against certain reward/XX% discount and so on.

4- Engage in Conversations

To be successful in social media marketing, engage in conversations with your followers and industry experts. Ensure you respond to comments made by your customers and prospects as this makes them feel special. Use monitoring tools to track brand and keyword mentions across all channels and use those mentions to engage in conversations. When you are active and engaged in conversations, you boost your relationships with your followers. Customers are also more loyal to brands that engage. This is because it makes them feel that they are engaging with real people who care about them.

Related Reading:

21 Conversation Ideas to Engage Customers & Prospects on Twitter

5- Hire an Expert

Finding the right hashtags when posting, responding to customer comments, and coming up with engaging content can be time consuming. If you feel like you are spending most of your working hours on social media, it is best to outsource the task to social media marketers such as The Guerrilla Agency. Many entrepreneurs prefer doing it all by themselves to save on costs.

However, when you have too much to handle and limited time, you end up missing some great opportunities and this is why outsourcing is essential. When hiring someone to handle your social media accounts, ensure you check their areas of expertise. Ask for an overview of projects they have handled in the past and the plan they have for your business.

Related Reading:

5 Signs it’s Time to Hire a Marketing Agency for Your Business

 

The Bottom Line:

By using social media, businesses can reach out to prospects, offer customer service, and follow conversations to identify customer needs and what others are saying about a brand.

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